Controlling Your Contact Height

One important thing your footwork can allow you to do is to control your contact height. Sometimes you won’t be able to either move up or move back fast enough to be able to make contact in the same place every single time. In these cases, how much you bend your knees (or don’t bend your knees!) will help you control your contact height.

At 0:30 in the video above, we’ve split-screened high speed video of two different forehands I hit. The video on the right is of a ball that is sitting up more as it comes towards me. On the left is a ball that is very low to the ground. Notice that in both videos, I’m standing in the same place on the court. What you’ll see in this video is that I use different amounts of knee bend to help control my contact height, and that the mechanics of my upper body remain the same with both swings. This is critically important, because you don’t want your upper body mechanics changing between groundstrokes if you can avoid it. Especially important is that you don’t want to be bending over at the waist to reach a lower ball.

You can see that when I hit the low ball, it almost looks like I’m sitting down in a chair, but again the key is that my upper body remains upright. If we freeze both forehands at contact, you can see that my upper body position looks very similar even though my contact height is significantly lower in the video to the left.

Just to reinforce, let’s rewind and watch both forehands play in super slow-motion side by side. You can see that the mechanics of these two swings are identical except for the amount of knee bend I use to control my contact point.

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Before the course, my serve speed was at maximum 85 mph. After the course, I am serving around an incredible 105 mph. Before, I was suffering with a shoulder injury that was causing a lot of pain. After a couple hours of training, now I’m serving 20 mph faster, and I have no shoulder pain!

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My serve speed increased from 80 to 102 mph. Before taking the course my biggest serve challenge was getting the ball to drop down into the service box when I tried to serve hard. Dr. Kovacs demonstrated how to generate power using the lower body and how to transfer that power up through the body to the ball. Now the ball explodes off my racket and consistently spins down into the service box with room to spare.

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Bob, Mike and Will's course really revealed the secrets to successful doubles play at the rec level. The drills are all designed to develop consistency and reduce on-court errors. Once in a match situation, Bob and Mike show you the keys to good court positioning, positive partner to partner communication, and the proper match mindset. These things have helped me up my USTA playing level on the doubles court. p.s. Plus it's so amusing to watch Bob and Mike work on court with Will, who looks like he could be their kid brother (ha ha!). Will's the best and his courses are always first rate!

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The Fuzzy Yellow Balls course with the Bryan Bros has been the single biggest factor in my rise as a doubles player. Within the last three years I went from line 3 on the 4th team in our club to line 2 on the top team in the club, in the best league in the county. It is hard to improve your stroke play very significantly, but you can dramatically improve your mental game vs. your opponents. Most of them don't know they can learn more about the game. The Bryan Bros course is my secret weapon, really practical advice, from the top doubles team of all time. And, it is very easy to learn the way Will edits the course into 10 or 15 minute videos. Watch one a day and you're win percentage will go way up.

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About Fuzzy Yellow Balls

Fuzzy Yellow Balls was co-founded in 2007 by Will Hamilton and Adam Sieminski, with the dream of creating the ultimate destination for recreational players seeking the highest quality instruction from the biggest names in the game.

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